Todd Porter: Winslow proves he's a perfectionist

While Cleveland Browns Stadium rocked like it hasn’t in a decade and fans danced, hugged and sang to the word of “Shout,” Kellen Winslow Jr. was on the sideline shouting.

Todd Porter

While Cleveland Browns Stadium rocked like it hasn’t in a decade and fans danced, hugged and sang to the word of “Shout,” Kellen Winslow Jr. was on the sideline shouting.

“WE’VE GOTTA FINISH THIS GAME! WE’VE GOTTA WIN IT AS A TEAM,” Winslow yelled to no one and everyone who could hear.

The perfectionist tight end for the Cleveland Browns was playing his best game of the season. He had the marks — a rug burn on his forehead seeping blood, scratches and cuts on his arms and a body that felt like senior citizen — to prove it.

“Some days I feel 60, some days I feel 30,” Winslow said. “We’ll see what tomorrow is.”

He contorted his body like a 245-pound ballerina that can float like a butterfly and caught passes that guys at his position shouldn’t, at least not all the time. Winslow seemed to will his team to a win Sunday against Houston.

That is what this season is turning into. Someone different every week willing the Browns to a win. Sunday it was Winslow’s turn during a 27-17 win over Houston.

After it was over — after quarterback Derek Anderson threw for 253 yards, after running back Jamal Lewis gashed the Texans for 134, after the offense put up nearly 400 yards and the defense played its best four quarters of the season — Winslow didn’t bask in the glow of what may be a playoff hunt.

He looked back at what the Browns left on the field.

“Twenty-one points,” Winslow said. “We have a bunch of perfectionists on our team. I don’t know what we were for third downs. Jamal ran good, but he could have had more yards. I missed some blocks. D.A. (Anderson) got hit and sacked (once). ... We still could’ve had 21 points on the board.”

With the Browns wearing throwback uniforms from the 1950s, Winslow played like he belonged there.

He does that every week.

“That’s what you get paid to do, man,” Winslow said. “That’s my job to make plays when it comes my way.”

Then Winslow slips back into his obsessive-compulsive mode. Instead of talking about the great plays he made, the times when he caught the ball and got crunched like a trash compactor a split second later, he talks about what he and his teammates didn’t do.

“We left a lot of football on the field,” Winslow said. “We didn’t start the way we wanted to. We killed ourselves early and got lucky.”

What few realize is Winslow is playing on a broken down body, never mind how it got that way. Winslow is playing football on legs that feel like a splintered cane, and he’s still among the best at his position.

Is he close to being the player he was in college?

“Hell no,” he said. “It’s real tough, but I’m not gonna talk about my injuries. I’m not even close, not even close. I don’t know about being 100 percent, but I can get pretty close.”

In practice, Winslow is the only starter at a skilled position dressed in full pads.

If Winslow is feeling a pound, he said he knows his body that well, over 242 on a Saturday, he’ll get on a treadmill and run it off. If he’s at 247 and wants to get down to 242, he’ll run a series of 30-yard sprints to burn the weight off.

“Or I just won’t eat,” he said. “I need to be at 242.”

A day before playing a game that makes grown men feel like ground beef on Monday, Winslow is running to play at 242 pounds.

He does this because he has obsessive compulsive disorder.

You laugh, thinking he’s joking and to break an awkward moment.

“I’m serious,” he said. “If my wife throws me a cup, and I don’t catch the cup the way I want, I’ll make her throw it to me again. And I tuck everything. I tuck the cups when she throws them to me.

“There are certain things I always do with my hands and I don’t know why I’m doing it other than I always do it.”

OCD and a perfectionist? So, if the bed has a wrinkle in it, will he not take a nap?

“I’m not that bad,” he said. “But I do take it too far. Sometimes, I’m like, ‘Kellen, stop it. Just stop it. Stop doing that.’”

Before every play, Winslow pulls his gloves onto his fingers as tight as he can get them. Before every snap, he’ll tap his facemask twice.

“I don’t know why I do that,” he said. “My gloves? They have to be as tight as I can get them.”

There are plenty of monetary reasons for Winslow to make sure he’s on the field every Sunday. But there are also ways for guys to be on the field and make sure they stay there by not selling out.

That isn’t Winslow’s way. It wasn’t the way his Hall of Fame father played the game. It wasn’t the way his family allowed him to do anything.

“When the ball is in the air, I don’t hear anything,” Winslow said. “All I see is the ball. I don’t remember any of my catches. I remember my drops. That’s the perfection side of it. But when the ball’s in the air, it’s my ball. I don’t worry about getting hit.”

The Browns are winning football games the Winslow way. They’re not always perfect, but they’re striving for it.

Winslow smiles at what he, and the Browns, are becoming. He knows they’re not bad, and they’re not quite good enough yet. They’re getting there, together.

“I told you we were gonna turn some heads,” Winslow said. “We can only get better.”